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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27698786">Halfway Through the Dark</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/queer_cheer/pseuds/queer_cheer'>queer_cheer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who &amp; Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), The Diary of River Song (Big Finish Audio)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>1930s New York, Christmas, Detective Noir, Heist, Melody Malone - Freeform, Time Travel, he's just referenced throughout but this is mainly a river story featuring the ponds eventually!, mob boss, river is a magnet for trouble!, this is my shot at writing a doctor who christmas special and the doctor isn't even in it lol</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 03:36:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,898</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27698786</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/queer_cheer/pseuds/queer_cheer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherever River Song dares to go, trouble valiantly vows to follow. New York City circa 1930 is hardly an exception. She’d been investigating Weeping Angels as the mysterious Melody Malone through her clever Angel Detective Agency, but when a false lead sets her astray and lands her in trouble with ruthless mafia man Happy Salvatore, she finds herself with a week left until her Christmas Day deadline to repay a five-thousand dollar debt — or face the consequences. </p>
<p>But when she receives a note from a fellow time-traveler called Sid, who claims to need help stealing back an alien artifact from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, River sees an opportunity to cash in on an easy job. She doesn’t expect to get caught up in an intergalactic love letter written in the stars, and she certainly doesn’t expect to find more frightful foes than Happy Salvatore coming for her from the pages of history. As Sid’s letter warns, not everyone is who and what they say they are. Not everyone is even who or what they think they are. But sometimes, that isn’t such a terrible thing. And maybe — just maybe — River and Sid will both find their ways home in time for Christmas dinner.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Amy Pond/Rory Williams, Original Characters - Relationship, The Doctor/River Song</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Halfway Through the Dark</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello everyone! Hope you're all doing as well as we can do in this weird, messy world of ours. This is essentially me having a go at writing a Christmas special, and I hope to time it so that it's all published in time for Christmas! Hope you'll enjoy it x</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sky was a cold kind of grey that promised nothing. It had been spitting flurries over New York almost non-stop for the last week or so. But more often than not, romantic snow turned to a dismal rain in the wake sour city fumes, tour buses and taxi cabs, and the heat of glowing neon signs. In the city of restless nights, White Christmas was just a tune that wouldn’t be released for another few years.</p>
<p>Pity, thought River Song. She’d always liked the snow. Except now, she was Melody Malone, and she was beginning to think that maybe Melody Malone was supposed to hate it. Melody Malone hated a lot of things that River Song had loved, like lazy Sundays and carnivals and men in uniform. All the uniformed men in New York had no idea that their beloved nation sat on the brink of war. She could hardly look them in the eye knowing the things those eyes would soon see. It was 1939, and she was a woman out of time in more ways than one.</p>
<p>She leaned back in her chair and pulled her scarf a bit tighter. Her office was on the top floor of a rickety wood building that creaked in the wind, froze in the winter, and sweltered in the warmer months. She much preferred the cold to the heat — at least the cold didn’t bring flies. No, the rotten summer stench of the rubbish outback did that well enough. The cold only brought a chill that cut through her faux fur coat like a knife through butter. But she’d felt worse.</p>
<p>River turned her attention from the window to the stacks of papers on her desk. They were mostly bills, all overdue, or clippings from newspapers with circled bits that she thought might’ve been interesting, but ultimately were not. Missing people who could’ve been snatched by the Weeping Angels, but turned up drunk in Atlantic City a few days later instead. Reports of strange statues that were hardly alien, but rather a schoolboy’s idea of a (phallic) joke. That sort of thing. </p>
<p>But just beneath an article about a cat burglar who turned out to be, in fact, a real tabby cat with a penchant for poaching shiny things off window sills, she spotted the corner of an unopened letter, addressed to a Miss River Song. Her blood ran cold, and then boiled in electric anticipation. No one here knew to call her that. There was no return address, and no postage stamp.</p>
<p>“Carol,” she called to her secretary, a doe-eyed twenty-something with quick wit and quicker fingers — on the typewriter, that is.</p>
<p>“Hm?” Carol looked up from her own desk, just outside of River’s open office door. </p>
<p>“Who dropped off this letter?” </p>
<p>“The River-Something one?” Carol shrugged. “Just some guy. Came by this morning before you got in. I told him this was a Miss Melody Malone’s office and that River Song didn’t work here — I imagine she was the last tenant, and judging by the way we found this place, she was a real slob! But he was real adamant that I left it on your desk. Said you’d know what it meant,” she paused. “Do you?” </p>
<p>River gave her a narrow-eyed look and then examined the letter once again. </p>
<p>“What did this guy look like?” </p>
<p>“Tall. Weird clothes. He had on a top hat, but it wasn’t a nice one,” Carol thought for a moment. “He seemed a little...I don’t know. A bit crumby. Not like the goons or anything, but just...off. Do you know him?”</p>
<p>“Hm,” River hummed. It didn’t sound like the Doctor — and besides, the Doctor wouldn’t come here. He couldn’t! Temporal anomalies, fixed points, blah, blah, blah. But what if…</p>
<p>She was running her nail along the envelope’s sealed edge when there was a knock at the front door, a heavy-fisted thump, thump, thump. River’s mouth went dry.</p>
<p>“Speaking of goons,” she tucked the letter into her coat pocket and straightened her posture. “Go on, Carol. Let him in.” </p>
<p>With a wary look, Carol crossed the floor and turned the deadbolt lock. No sooner did a round and ruddy man burst through, puffing on a fat cigar and huffing like the ten-or-so steps had nearly done him in. He wouldn’t have been intimidating, had it not been for the fact that River knew all too well just how many guns he was packing beneath his coat.</p>
<p>He brushed past Carol without a word and shut the door to River’s office behind him with such force a few books toppled off the adjacent shelf. River stood up with her best grin.</p>
<p>“If it isn’t my favourite mob boss—” </p>
<p>“Enough of the pleasantries, Malone,” barked the man. “You know why I’m here.” </p>
<p>“You should’ve called first, Happy,” she hummed a pleasant tune. “I would’ve put the kettle on.” </p>
<p>Frank “Happy” Salvatore was not the kind of man that would sit for a cup of tea. He was, rather, the type of man that would break your kneecaps for even suggesting such a thing. He hadn’t gotten his name for being overly jolly; it was really more like the kind of irony at play when someone names their pet Chihuahua something big like Killer, or when the Bronx Zoo chooses to call its prized elephant Tiny. </p>
<p>“I ain’t here for no tea,” he stubbed his cigar out on River’s desk, leaving a trail of ash. “I’m here for my money. We had a deal.” </p>
<p>“Yes,” admitted River. “You gave me one month.” </p>
<p>“On November 25,” he grabbed her calendar from her desk and pointed at the date. “It’s December 18. You got one week.” </p>
<p>“A lot can happen in one week,” she swatted his hand away. </p>
<p>“A lot better happen,” he jabbed an accusing finger into her chest. “You’s a pretty dame, Malone, but you ain’t prettier than five-thousand dollars.” </p>
<p>“You’ll get your money, Happy,” River, unaffected, sat down and propped her feet up on her desk. “I’m a woman of my word.” </p>
<p>He scoffed out a ring of smoke. “You wasn’t a woman of your word when you let Danny Margo run.”</p>
<p>He turned in his black wingtips and stormed out with as much red-faced force as he’d come in with, leaving only the lingering stink of smoke and silence. With him out of sight, River let herself sigh. Carol poked her head into the room with a sympathetic look.</p>
<p>“Where the hell are you going to get five-thousand dollars in a week?”</p>
<p>“I’ll get it.” </p>
<p>Carol came in and took a seat in the chair across from River’s desk.</p>
<p>“You could skip town. I’ll tell Happy you threw yourself off the Brooklyn Bridge.” </p>
<p>River managed a slight laugh. </p>
<p>“Oh, no. I’d just get into the same trouble in a new city, I’m sure.” </p>
<p>Carol giggled. “You must go looking for it.” </p>
<p>“It comes looking for me, more like,” River corrected with a smirk. “Most of the time it’s fun, but this time, it’s gotten a bit annoying, really.” </p>
<p>“I’ll say,” remarked Carol. “You shouldn’t have let Danny Margo go.”</p>
<p>River gave a dismissive wave. “Danny Margo didn’t do anything wrong. I wasn’t going to hand an innocent man over to the mafia.” </p>
<p>“So you pretended you were gonna, asked for half the payment up front, and then split it with the guy you were supposed to whack?” Carol counted off the steps on her fingers for emphasis. “You didn’t have to get involved at all. There might not be a lot of crimes to solve right now, but that doesn’t mean you gotta go out there and make your own.” </p>
<p>Annoyed, River glared at her. “Don’t you have things to type?” </p>
<p>“Alright, alright,” Carol put her hands up in feigned innocence. “I know when I’m not wanted.” </p>
<p>She fluttered across the floor and returned to her own desk, and once River heard the steady clicking of her typewriter, she reached into her coat for the letter.</p>
<p>“C’mon, Doctor,” she muttered. “I could really use one of your stupid miracles right about now.” </p>
<p>She peeled back the envelope and hurriedly unfolded the sheet of paper hidden inside. The script was scrawled and messy, but still too neat to belong to him — to the Doctor. Swallowing back what she reckoned was probably disappointment, she figured it wouldn’t hurt to read it anyway.</p>
<p>
  <i> Miss Malone — or Professor Song, if you’d like,</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>I know there is more to you than meets the eye. I know this, because there’s more to me than meets the eye, too. I’ve learned that very few people are who and what you think they are. I’m sure you know that, too.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>But I’m not writing you to tell you what you know. I’m writing you because I need help, and word around here is that you’re the gal to come to if a fella needs help. Now before you get to thinking all that weird stuff, it isn’t like that. I just lost something, and I need to get it back. I hear you're good at finding lost things — it takes one to know one, eh? </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>As for what I’ve lost, it’s kinda hard to explain in a letter. There’s a warehouse down by the old Brooklyn Navy Yard. Meet me there at eight o’clock tonight, and I’ll tell you everything. Come alone. And, because I’m sure a discerning lady such as yourself is busy, I can promise you this’ll be worth your while. </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>See you soon.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Sid </i>
</p>
<p>River turned the letter over as if she expected some sort of better explanation to be on the back, but it was blank, and so was her mind. Sid? She’d never met anyone called that before. It could’ve been a trick by one of Happy’s gun-crazed disciples, but then again…she examined the envelope and traced her fingers over her name — River Song. No one here knew her by that nom de guerre, and that was very much intentional. But someone, it seemed, did, and that was enough to pique her interest. She looked up at the clock. Half past seven. The docks weren’t far. </p>
<p>She kicked off her sleek black heels and pulled on a far more practical pair of military boots she’d nicked from one of those nice men in uniform she couldn’t seem to look in the eye. As it turned, there were some activities that didn’t require much eye contact at all.</p>
<p>“Where are you headed?” Carol asked incredulously as River passed her by.</p>
<p>“I’ve got a meeting,” she took her hat from the rack and stuffed it onto her head at the protest of her bossy curls. She reached for her satchel, tucked in the corner, and slung it over her shoulder.</p>
<p>“At this hour?” </p>
<p>“Yeah. Lock up when you go home.” River tossed her the key. The only reason Carol stayed so late was to use the typewriter — for all River knew, she slept at her desk. She had it in her head that she’d write the Next Great American Novel. River sort of admired her moxie.</p>
<p>“Alright,” Carol tucked the key into the desk drawer and returned her attention to her work. She knew River well enough — or at least, she knew Melody Malone well enough — to know that there were some things she just shouldn’t ask about. Sometimes, it was better not to know.</p>
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